There are over 2 billion hectares of degraded and deforested land across the world - places that have lost their ability to provide nature's benefits to people and the planet. Together we can restore them.

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is a process that aims to regain ecological integrity and enhance human well being in deforested or degraded forest landscapes.

It involves people coming together to restore the function and productivity of degraded forest lands - through a variety of place-based interventions, including new tree plantings, managed natural regeneration, or improved land management. FLR relies on active stakeholder engagement in the process and can accommodate a mosaic of different land uses, including agriculture, agroforestry, protected wildlife reserves, regenerated forests, managed plantations, and riverside plantings to protect waterways, just to name a few.

FLR is a more than just planting trees – it is restoring a full landscape “forward” to meet present and future need and provide multiple benefits and accommodate multiple uses over time. Regenerated forests can buffer wildlife reserves, protect water supplies, or encourage agroforestry economies. FLR is placed based and fluid.

Latest news on Forest Landscape Restoration from IUCN

Forest landscape restoration can dramatically improve food security in rural areas - but we need more evidence to understand how best this works, and where. We are calling for new research papers linking landscape restoration to food security. …

Please join IUCN's Global Forest and Climate Change Programme on December 4th at COP 20's Mountain & Water Pavilion in Lima for a special session on exploring the synergies between climate mitigation and adaptation in Forest Landscape Restoration. …